In the marble-floored great hall, amongst the standing suits of armor, hanging weaponry, and my flouncing self, Henry VIII, King of England and Scotland, Prince of Wales, Duke of Normandy, and all that happy horseshit, stood and raised his mug to the crowd, shouting, "All hail!"

"Wassail!" said those gathered, in another display of Pavlovian obsequiousness that sickened me more and more nightly. Cornish game hen was served, and cheesecake for dessert. At length the serving wenches took the diners' credit cards, for this was The Monarch's Den - the crown jewel of medieval dinner theater in the Midwest.

This is not exactly where I pictured my acting career peaking when I started auditioning for parts as a teenager. This is not even where I pictured mopping the floor at nights while I auditioned for better parts. However, it is steady work, and I like my co-workers. Plus, for what it's worth, I am acting. Fortunately, my role is more anonymous than all the rest: I'm the jester. I get to wear clown makeup for the entire performance, and my costume covers most of my body, save for my face. I get to do physical comedy, and my lines are sparse. Occasionally, I sing, which is about how often that I should sing. Mostly I just prance around like an idiot, which is at least period accurate. Then the customers bang on the table with dowels, just like in the old days! Oh, what fun they had.***The shows went on until 11:00, and after I took a shower and made the drive, it was usually midnight before I got home. Tonight, Brianna was in bed already, which was a relief. I had nothing to say to her anymore, and conversation was a chore after acting on stage all night, singing those stupid-ass songs. I slept on the couch, by choice.

Brianna's near-daily exhortations upon me to find a real job had really started to wear me down of late. The next morning, her attitude was no different. She told me she was leaving for work, and then stood in front of me with her arms crossed across her print scrub shirt - I should explain that Brianna was a nurse. She did deadly serious work, at the St. John's Mercy NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit. I had always admired her for that, but it had hardened her over the years since we graduated from college to the point that she now believed everyone's work should be as stressful as hers, and if it wasn't, they were just pussies. That was something that I did not admire her for at all. When asked, Brianna told our neighbors that I'm a bartender at a titty bar on the east side. In return, I told them that she danced there.

"Hello? Joe? When are you going to find a real job?" She repeated, stridently, disgusting me.

"Right after I find a real wife," I said, faster than I could think. She swore at me, stomped out and slammed the door so hard that it bounced back from the frame without even latching, and pictures fell from the wall. We had so many pictures in this house, of us, of her family, and not mine. Furious, I kicked over an end table and shattered a porcelain lamp that may or may not have been her grandmother's. Her family was well off, and had so many heirlooms and shit that I couldn't keep up.

The odd thing was what she did no longer bothered me. At that point, I didn't care if she even came home or not. She could go to hell, in fact, and I wouldn't feel sorry for her at all. I looked at the broken pieces of the lamp for a couple of seconds, and unplugged the cord from the wall; pushed the front door closed. The house was empty now, except for me, and it felt dead, airy, and cold, and I could relate.***I mentioned serving wenches earlier, and I was serious. The script calls for a skinny wench, a fat wench, a buxom wench, and a couple of average ones. At tonight's show, the buxom one was non gratis. That's because George had fired her a few days ago for snorting coke off the ladies' room counter top. An occupational hazard. We were able to fill the time with musical numbers by Ruth Ann, who had by far the best voice of the entire troupe. The show had been going on fairly well this way for a couple of weeks, but the owners insisted that we still needed a buxom wench. We had readings and interviews today to fill the part. George, the director/pianist, had drafted me to play opposite the wench wannabes. What can I say, seniority still counts for something.

I met George at the theater at 10:00. He was one of those guys who spoke with enunciation in his tone, agile facial expressions, and a lisp; he was no help in the prevention of the perpetuation of stereotypes. No matter to me; I was glad that I didn't have to be there alone for any length of time. This place creeped me out when it was empty. The knotty pine paneling on the walls looked like a bunch of rats' eyes, staring at you out of the honey blonde wood.

We had had many job openings in my time here. It was always hard to hire for this place because we needed a certain ethnic look as well as multiple talents. Our shtick was 16th century England, and according to the real history, that wasn't exactly a diverse place. We had to turn away a number of talented actresses with great voices just because their skin didn't fit the part. That was medieval in itself - I had never succumbed to the racism that still infested this city - and it was disappointing that we had to resort to it, but theatre, even this low on the artistic totem pole, must maintain a certain purity of itself.

We had this Latin chick named Carmen come in, who had the body and knew all of the lines, but she couldn't waitress. Then we had several who couldn't act or sing, but were experienced waitresses that could carry half a table's worth of dishes up each arm. Sorry, that's a great skill, but we needed actresses.

By 3:45 George, our Artistic Director/Pianist, was as tired of bad singing, bad acting, and bad waitressing as I was by then. I asked him who was next, drinking some coffee.

After a suitable roll of the eyes, he propped his half-glasses back in place on his nose and said "Okay, so now we have Miss," George paused dramatically, and lowered his voice an octave, "Claire Bender."

Who? That woke me up. Couldn't be her. "Who did you say?"

Again with the James Earl Jones: "Claire Bender. With an 'e'. Do you know her?"

"I was in high school drama classes with a Claire Bender." I guess she didn't meet with smashing success, either.George shrugged. "Hmm, well, small world. Go get her, will you?"

Oh Christ, George, why did you make me do this? Obediently, I did the honors, bringing along my clipboard, for a prop. All the world's a stage, you know.

I stepped out into the next room, which was a two-room pub with a bar occupying most of what would be the north wall. The show didn't happen out there; I had never actually been in that part of the theatre when it was open. It made for a serviceable waiting room, and the bartender was working. Some of the other auditioning actresses had obviously been patronizing him."Claire Bender, please?" I said, head tilted down at the clipboard, eyes up at the room, shifty.

From a chair at a table in the back of the room, she stood. I was right. It was definitely her, though it took me a second to realize this. Last time I had seen her, the styles had been drab and modest, and young women often interchangeable. Today, not so. I recognized her by her delicate features, that possessed her face as opposed to defining it: her nose finely rendered and drawing to a point, her lips full and feminine, her eyes enormous, brown, and deep - not in their hue but rather their figure - and all of it blended at the edges by her pale feathery skin as if she were the subject of a Renoir.

Her hair was parted to the side and straight and multicolored from blonde through sienna red to the black-brown of burnt soil, and she dressed to prove that, yes, she was indeed qualified to be the Buxom Wench. She looked good in the room, with its ponderous oaken bar and dire British fetishes strewn about.

"I saw the ad in the paper, and you know how I always was about medieval stuff." Yes, I did. Claire was one of those girls that got hooked on Tolkien and Feist and Jordan at a young age, and saw reflections of herself in the realms of hobbits, elves, and wizardry.

"Well, you've come to the right place," I said.

"After my reading we have to get together and catch up," she said.

"Yes, I would like that. Right now, though, I am technically working, so I have to be brief and bring you in for the reading. We can talk later at the brewery." I held her hand shortly, and I caught her eye. The twinkle in it was honest, direct, and ancient - primal.***I brought her through, introduced her to George. Pleasantries dispatched, he had her read lines from the script against me. For the sake of the readings, I played the role of the king.

"Oh sire," said Claire, "could I not make thee a wife?"

"Tell me, wench," I said, suppressing a giggle, or perhaps an episode of vomiting, "how couldst thou serve me?"She gave me a look, one that we used to share, when we would speak similar lines in high school drama. The pure cheese that Mr. Fuhr had inflicted upon us - "Our Town" and the like - seemed designed more to drive us from the theater than acclimate us to it. But then again, in those days, my tastes were suitably hard-boiled as befits a high school kid. I had been teaching myself the Kevin Spacey part in "Glengarry Glen Ross" and my acting hero was Christian Slater, of all people.

Technically speaking, Claire's reading was as spotty as the rest. She didn't sing all that well, but she was mostly on key, her acting was okay, and her waitressing passable. She spilled some beer, but didn't drop any dinnerware. After I walked her out to the pub, I reminded her that we would meet up, at the brewery next door. We were upstairs, so there was an elevator ride down to street level, and at the bottom, we again squeezed hands a bit too long, and after she left. I smelled her perfume in the elevator; I felt as if the car would never stop going up.

George asked me, "What do you think?"

I thought for a second, clearing the memories away, being professional. "I think she's about as good as we're going to get all-around, but I can't work with her."

"Why not?"

"I can't afford a divorce."

"Oh, I thought I saw some chemistry there! If you were the king I'd hire her anyway." George nodded once with that, playfully slapping my arm, giving me his mischievous smirk. He understood heterosexuality, if not firsthand.

"George," I scolded him.

"How do you know her? Tell me. I have to know." George fascinated now, he leaned forward with his chin on his interlaced hands. I hesitated to respond, but hell, my wife wouldn't come within 20 feet of the front door of this place, and George was trustworthy enough. Might as well let it out.

"Okay," I sighed. "I went to high school with Claire. I always liked her, in that way. We were a lot alike, and we ended up spending a lot of time together. She was one of those girls that I always had an attraction to but I was afraid to act on it."

"Why were you afraid?" George asked, solicitously. "She seemed very down to earth and, if you don't mind me saying so, like she wouldn't have been averse to your advances. Even now. She looked at you like that way." He dramatically rolled his eyes.

"It's stupid." It was, and I didn't want to admit it.

"Tell me," he said, and added, "As your boss I order you to." He added a nod to this that made me chuckle, and then apologize.

"Okay. This is so idiotic looking back on it." He raised his eyebrows, go on. "When I was in high school, I didn't have many friends. In fact people hated me."

"Same here," said George, nodding. "I never got the St. Louis high school obsession."

"You're not from here? I never knew that."

"I'm from Kirksville. Anyway, you were saying, go on." He gestured for me to do so, while he wrote something in his notebook.

"I wouldn't have guessed that. Anyway, I thought that the key to being accepted was to have the approval of all of the popular kids. You know, the cheerleaders, jocks, the school aristocracy." George nodded. "Claire and I had a mutual attraction going on, but she wasn't popular, so I was afraid to hook up with her. I was afraid that other people might make fun of me for being with her because she wasn't the type of girl that popular kids liked."

George's mouth gapped open and his reading glasses slid back down his nose. "You said what? That you wouldn't ask out a girl that you obviously STILL have the flaming hots for - oh, don't deny it - because you were afraid that some jocks and rich kids wouldn't approve?"

"High school is stupid bullshit," I shrugged.

Placed in blunt terms like those George used, the shame drilled even deeper, and I slumped down in my chair in hopes that it would pass over me. It had been following me for many years. Truth was that I thought about Claire often. Not quite daily, but I remembered her, and unlike a lot of my memories, those of Claire were good ones. I often recalled one episode when we were staying after school for rehearsals, and we were both waiting on our parents to pick us up. The school had a foyer where we could see the front breezeway, where our parents would stop for us. This foyer was unheated, this was late fall, and we were cold, huddled and shivering in the doorways. I can remember what she was wearing: school jacket, a blue turtleneck, jeans as always, and deck shoes - Dexter moccasins. Those were popular that year. She had pulled back her hair, then a dull walnut shade, with a bobby pin or barrette on the top of her head. We sat or leaned on the rails that separated the doorways, talking about seemingly innocuous things, drama class, the play we were doing, school politics, I don't know.

But the eyes, they were overflowing with curiosity, perhaps lust, and the winter dryness, or perhaps something else, made us lick our lips as the other spoke. It was the kind of scene where ideal people like those in the movies would pounce on each other and ram their tongues down each others' throats, and the camera would do some kind of spiraling trick and we'd fade to black and the morning would come eventually, then we'd try to figure out what the hell it was we just did - although, at 15 it was more along these lines: mom honks the horn, you run to the car saying "I'll see you at school tomorrow," and once you get home, you proceed to masturbate furiously. We implicitly understood this, even as the moment presented itself; we were aware of the cliché aspects of our situation and jointly refused to feed the infernal machine of high Romance. My mother, who picked me up that night, asked me who that girl was, and Claire told me the next day that her parents had asked her about me.

George looked at me thoughtfully for a while. He pushed his glasses back up his nose; the effect was Elton John playing the role of therapist.

"Hello, Joe?" I must have zoned out; I acknowledged.

"What's your wife doing right now," he asked.

I checked my watch - 4:55. "She's probably just got off work; she's at home watching TV, playing with the cat, maybe checking her email." I breathed deeply, the nerves starting already. "She knew that we had readings today and that I would be home early. She might have made plans with her girlfriends to go out for some drinks or something."

George crossed his arms and said contritely, "You have no clue what your wife is up to right now, do you?"

"No, I don't," I had to admit, "and at this point I don't really care a lot as long as she's not stealing from me or killing someone."

George silently gasped. "I didn't realize it had gotten that bad," George said, with wide-eyed surprise.

"I'm starting to think that it's gotten to where it needs to be to fix it."

George sighed. "What? Oh, you boys and girls and your love games." He shook his head exaggeratedly. "Now go talk to Claire. I know you had to have made plans."

"How-" I said.

"Just go. I'm ordering you to do that, too."

I frowned at him.

"Don't you want to?" he asked.

I paced in front of him, wringing my hands, shrugging. "I'm a married man, George; I can't put myself in a situation like this."

"Why not? Your marriage is busted, you just said so yourself. Right?"

"I don't know," I said.

"If you don't know," said George, "Then you aren't married except on paper. Go. Go on, get out of here." He motioned as if he were sweeping me out. I guess Claire was the last reading.***The brewery next door had a name, but it might as well have not. I had been in dozens of places that were exactly like it since I had gained legal age: microbreweries/restaurants in old brick buildings with exposed structural beams, which offered straight-from-the-vat beer with your meal and tours of the working facilities. There were 6-8 different in-house brews on tap and a smattering of bar & grill food, with appetizers such as toasted ravioli and deep-friend artichoke hearts. Standard stuff for the city. This place in particular had some good beer that didn't taste too much like malt; the pizza was pretty good too. Since I worked next door, I was a regular, and the bartenders knew me by name. On the weekends, this place became a meat market after dark and the building behind it became a dance club.

Twilight was invading right now, late in the fall, and the kids were taking over from the tourists, slowly.As I stepped inside the brewery's corner front door, I saw Claire sitting at the front bar, perched anxiously in front of a beer glass containing the remains of a beer.

"Hi, Claire," I said, feeling my heartbeat skip just like the old days.

"Hi, Joe," she said, closing her eyes for a moment and then smiling warmly. She offered me her hand, and I took it in both of mine, holding it until I sat down on the stool next to her, and she watched me all the way. "This place has good beer; I've actually never been here before." Barry, behind the bar recognized me, gave me the old "whattaya have, Joe" - two red lagers, please - and a skeptical glance when he saw us touching. I ignored that, and started a tab.

Claire said, "I don't have a chance for the job, do I?"

"If the final decision were mine you'd get it," I said.

"Oh, that's nice of you to say, but you don't have to be nice," she said.

"Seriously. You were the best all-around."She half-smiled, appreciative. "You're just being nice. I can't sing!"

"You're better than me! I have a musical number in the show and I butcher it every time. It'd be really humiliating without the jester makeup to hide my face." She thought this was funny; leaned forward, sophisticated with her legs crossed and an eager warmth and wisdom in her voice. "I can't believe you ended up doing this. How long have you been at this place?" I told her, six years. "I always thought you must have gone to New York or something, really tried to be an actor. You were always so talented, I had no idea you stayed in town."

"I majored in computer science in college. I tried to be a programmer. Parents talked me into it. You know how my dad was with McDonnell Douglas."

"Couldn't stand the cubicle life?" she said, from obvious experience.

"Not at all. I lasted a couple of years out of school and then I went back to theater." We commiserated on office work for a spell.

Eventually, she asked, "What about your wife? What does she do?"

I hadn't mentioned her. This means that she had been looking at my hands, which meant that she had been looking for my ring, which meant that she was curious about my marital status, which meant what I thought it meant.

"She's a nurse," I said, and explained. She watched babies die, daily, as I gallivanted about the Den's low stage like a medieval Village Person.

She was impressed. "Oh, that's tough work; I bet she has a hard time with it."

"She's kind of gotten numb to it all now," I said. The bartender brought us refills, and we went on to discuss what we had been doing since high school.

At length, I asked her, "So where did you end up going to school?"

"ColoradoCollege," she said, sipping her beer and approving of it. "English major."

"No way! I have friends in Colorado Springs," I said. One of my favorite towns, to visit.

She smiled, "Oh really? Do they go to school there?"

"Well, no. They're online friends. Never met them in person." I felt a little ashamed, as she drank her beer again, never removing her eyes from me. For that matter, I watched her the whole time.

"I have some friends like that," she said, "they live in Connecticut, though, and Wyoming. Would you believe how rural some parts of Connecticut are? I guess we Midwesterners always think of New England as one big city, but.."

She rambled on and I pretend-listened. When we were young, her eyes had always lit up when she was giving one of her expositions on a part of the world to which she had never been, and that was one of her great hobbies. Tonight was no exception; I stared mesmerized. As her story wound down, I glanced about at the room, at the clientele and the bourgeois that offered context for our aristocracy of two. A young couple at the tall table in the corner, holding hands, leaning into each other and laughing at the jokes they told at each others' expense. New romance, their meals cooling, them not paying one damn bit of attention to us.

Claire had finished her story, and to this day, I have no idea what happened at the end of it, but I must have really gotten the hang of faking attention over 5 years of marriage.

"Wow, but I'm prattling. So do I really have a chance for the job?" She made a fist, leaned her chin on it, and stared at me with eyes wide open, batting lashes.

"I think so." I swallowed the rest of my beer. "Let's walk around," as this would allow me to step away, which I couldn't do at the rapidly filling bar. We wandered around to the back of the room, past the pool tables and the back bartender.

There were some tall guys there - everyone that came here was taller than me - talking shit about some other tall guys that were there, and beyond them, as they glanced and scoffed, we found a secluded corner. It wasn't totally dark, but then it didn't strive towards illumination either - nor did we complain. It was proper.

She said, "I'm curious." This is never good.

"About what," I said.

"I can feel the tension," women could always feel the tension, "here tonight, and we haven't seen each other for years. We were spending all that time together every day in high school. Why didn't we ever hook up? Why didn't we date?"

She had inched toward me and now we were shoulder-to-shoulder; whispering and talking at the same time, here in the dark, I smelled what was left of her perfume and it agreed with me. I hovered around there for a while.

I knew the answer, but could I tell her?

No, I couldn't. "It never seemed right, I guess."

"It always seemed right, after that time in the foyer. You know this."

I said, "Which time in the foyer?" Knowing exactly what she meant - the story that I told George, earlier.

She sniggered to herself. "You were so cute," she said, holding onto my forearm. "We were waiting in the foyer at Ritenour for our moms to pick us up, and we were talking about each other, what we wanted to do after high school. You wanted to be a film actor in stuff like David Mamet or Ridley Scott would do," she said, chuckling.

"So did you."

"Yeah. We always wanted the same things," she half-spoke, half-sighed.

"Such as?"

"Each other," she said, and now she was now very close to me, mouth to my chin. I stand up straight involuntarily and she lays her cheek on my collarbone, tired but content and beautiful, soft, powdery feminine and oh so light at the touch; witness all of Her melting into me as she looks straight up at me, like a teenager, idolizing.

This couldn't go on. "Shit, I'm a married man, Claire," I said to her, "Fun as this game might be, I have to stop it." But I didn't move.

She sniggered, holding up her left hand, where I saw a bigger engagement ring than I could ever afford - "I'm almost a married woman, Joe." One-eyed, appraising me.

"And? There's still a big difference between being engaged and married," I said.

"Oh, just kiss me, you asshole. It's been years, she'll understand, not that she even has to know. My fiancé gets it. It's something we never had together and we got a second chance. This is one of the last weekends before we get married. I let him hook up with a girl from his high school a couple of weeks ago, so it's my turn. It's just a kiss, at least for now." At that last, she squeezed me, and I enjoyed all the connotations.

"I can't do that," I argued. "My wife doesn't get it. I made a promise to her that I would forsake all others. You know how that works."

She said nothing, and grabbed me down to her; okay. Five beers in, I'm too drunk to argue as she grips me. It burned through me, as cliché as it sounds, was there; a furious ardor, the kind that lives in the hearts of those who never let themselves give in to it until it builds to a head. She touched me and it all went to shit. The self undermines, turns you inside out and makes her/them feel what you want to be in the soul and then the flood; you come up for air and there she is, staring without pretense afterwards of the expression. You've been all technical while she's been all artistic, and she lets the distinction go. It's your turn: you give up your own leash and pour your soul out into the lady's waiting grasp. A real man would have held up against the onslaught of lust and nostalgia, and pushed her away. But there was such passion there, good Lord it was overwhelming. A hell of a squall of emotion over just the touching of lips and tongues.

Here is how she would have looked had this happened when it should have, back in the school days: eyes wide, hair pulled back, and beaming at me, smiling and batting eyelashes, just like tonight. I held her tightly with my right arm but loosely with the other and her face, turned up to me, caught the light. I saw imperfections that I didn't remember, but hey, what else is new.

"I've waited a long time for that," she said, half-whispering,

as if anyone could hear her speaking in this place.

"Me too, but we need to talk."

I stepped away from her, and towards the lighter parts of the room. I should have thought of this sooner. She followed me, and we sat down at a table, not too close to the tall guys, who were still flexing their nuts.

"You want to know the reason why I never asked you out?"

"Yes," she said, scooting her chair around towards mine and blowing trumpets across the hardwood.

"Okay. I was stupid. Nobody ever taught me better, so I actually bought into all that high school shit and I thought that the way to get girls and have people like me was to be popular." She nodded. "You weren't popular, so I thought that if I was seen with you or that people knew we were together, it would ruin my chances to have a social life. There, that's the truth."

As I finished, I looked at the floor, and I wished I had another beer, because as I told her the truth, I saw her face go from hopeful to optimistic to apathetic to sad to dejected to angry. Virtuosity. The truth will set me free.

"You were ashamed of me." Her face was red, and she was close to tears. Sigh.

"No, that's not it, damn it."

"Yes it was," she was sobbing now, "you were so ashamed of me so you didn't want to be seen with me, you fucking prick! Fuck you! I can't believe I humiliated myself like this!" She, of course, screamed all of that and the tall guys looked in our direction, and then turned back to their conversation without comment, which made it somehow all the more insulting.

She stomped out of the brewery, and that's the last that I ever saw of her, as chasing her would have been undignified, and besides, I have my wife at home, waiting on me. No need to bring attention to myself, when I shouldn't even be here. At least she didn't throw her beer at me. Brianna probably would have.*** I do not often make romantic gestures, but when I do, I make them count. I felt like I needed to make up for the fight this morning, and, yes, I felt guilty about what had just happened - so one such gesture was called for. First, I stopped at a florist, and got a dozen roses. Being out of season, they were expensive and pink, just the way Brianna likes them. I then bought her a couple of CDs that she had been wanting lately, of some nutless crooner and a comedian. Finally, two bottles of our favorite wine, or as I liked to call it, "truth serum."

I called her at the house to see if she wanted me to pick up dinner. There was no answer. Her cell phone, the same. I thought that maybe she had to work late, but when I pulled in the driveway, all the lights in the house were off, and her car was still there. Was there a power outage? No, the streetlights were on. This couldn't be good.

I walked in the door to total darkness. I flipped the light switch for the living room; it worked. There was nothing out of place, other than the lamp that I had broken that morning, the pieces still laying where they had fallen. I put the merchandise down on the kitchen table, and there I saw the Note. You know the kind, As Seen On TV. The one that all husbands dread finding on the table, when they come home with flowers and gifts; this example was written in blue ink on a 4x6 legal-yellow pad.

"Dear Joe,

You bastard! Breaking my grandmother's lamp was the last straw so there's no need to draw this out. I'm leaving you, for a better man. He had been wanting me to leave for a long time, but I wanted to try to save this bullshit marriage of ours. How stupid of me.

Don't worry about getting screwed in the divorce. You've never given me anything worth taking. Even that piece of shit car isn't worth the trouble. Have fun paying the property tax.

My lawyer will be in touch. Goodbye.

Brianna P.S. Keep your job as the fool, it suits you."

I stared at it for a while. It didn't seem real; it seemed like some instrument of a cosmic joke. Surely, she jests. Then, I tore the note from the pad, wadded it up, and threw it away. I stumbled through the house, wine bottle in hand, and looked at all of those pictures on the wall, of family and us; of all of those two-dimensional people staring at me out of the captured moments, unable to break free.

Bio: Josh Whitt recently started writing seriously again after a longhiatus, during which he had delusions of being a rock star and a dot-commillionaire. He lives in St. Louis with his wife and the world's laziest cat.